Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Q & A (July 2012)

When I pressed her for a reason
She refused to even answer… – Billy Joel, “The Stranger”

Got a question? Email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net. The last question is from a recent comment thread, but I thought it was worthwhile repeating in a more prominent location.

Inasmuch as “trafficking” is a problem, what should be done about it? I personally think that full deregulation of voluntary personal physical activities would pretty much take care of the problem, but I don’t think my countrymen would go for that. I understand that nothing will satisfy the anti-sex zealots who use trafficking as an excuse to persecute sex workers, but is there any degree of regulatory compromise that you would be comfortable with that could also allay the fears of those who talk about trafficking?

The short version is that there isn’t any such thing as “trafficking”, at least not as depicted by the fanatics. It’s a boondoggle, a moral panic, a new version of “white slavery” or the Satanic Panic. There are no vast criminal cartels “trafficking in humans” for sexual or any other purpose, and the overwhelming majority of the people labeled “trafficked” are actually either regular hookers, or people who have migrated to work; of course there is sometimes exploitation just as there is everywhere, but to depict these incidents as part of some gigantic conspiracy is no different from pretending all child sexual abuse is part of a Satanic cult network.

Have you had a regular job since retiring from prostitution? How do you deal with nasty comments about prostitutes from people who don’t know your background? And have you ever met a prostitute and had her “read” you as a former whore?

I haven’t had a “straight” job since I left the library in 1995. When my husband proposed he knew full well I would never agree to retire if that involved working for someone else again, so he had to agree to support me or it was no deal. Technically, I’m still a whore, but I only have one client now and it’s a very long-term contract. That’s really a good thing for my readers, because writing this column is literally a full-time job so I wouldn’t be able to do it if I had to spend 40 hours a week plus commute time doing something else.

How did you go from being a sex industry pro to being married and living in a completely remote area? Do you miss the variety, and do you do anything about it if you do? Also, do you think jealousy is ingrained in us, i.e. part of our instincts, or do you think it exists due to socio-cultural imprints?

The best way to answer the first part of your question would probably be to refer you to the interview with my husband linked in the question above; the second part was covered in my Q & A columns for November 2010, May 2011 and August 2011. As for jealousy, the proof of its biological origin is the fact that men and women tend to experience it differently. Most men are far more concerned with physical infidelity, and most women with emotional infidelity (which is why most well-adjusted women don’t really care about whores). This makes sense when you realize that since a woman can only have one baby per year, physical infidelity results in a huge genetic opportunity loss and resource drain for the male if his woman is impregnated by someone else. For women, it doesn’t matter how much seed her husband spreads around because he has plenty; it’s his resources being diverted to other women and their children which concerns her. That’s why men tend to feel more threatened by hearing about their wives’ past one-night stands than about ex-husbands, while women tend to feel more threatened by ex-wives than by past flings.

I think there certainly can be. People who are intelligent, open-minded and imaginative tend to be harder to restrain by arbitrary rules because they see no rational reason for those rules. And a woman with a mind of that sort who is faced with bills is far more likely than her duller, less imaginative sisters to recognize that sex work is a viable source of income, and far less likely to buy the propaganda designed to keep her from doing it. So although I don’t think it’s correct to make the broad statement that “whores are smarter than amateurs”, I do think it’s fair to say that the average intelligence of high-opportunity-cost sex workers is probably higher than that of their amateur sisters, for the simple reason that in situations where there are multiple options of which sex work is the best, less-intelligent women are far more likely to discard it as a viable option due to arbitrary rules and false propaganda which are more readily disregarded by women of greater intellectual agility.

20 Responses

Another excellent article, the opposite to demonisation. So important to give people a balanced perspective on this very important subject. The way a society treats it’s sex worker’s says a lot about it. Love your hooker:)

Hay – I have a question. Is your husband as opinionated as you are? I know you said that after your first marriage you’d never marry a guy who couldn’t hold his own with you in an argument – but then again, maybe he never disagrees with what you say – or maybe he’s just the silent male type that lets you have the floor?

I mean – and you don’t have to answer this, Maggie – but we all know he reads your blog. What’s his greatest negative criticism of you?

That question might also pertain to people like Grace also.

You seem like a tough bird most of the time on this blog and I know that can’t be you all the time in real life.

See – reason I’m asking is that I don’t really LIVE for all the issues we’re talking about here. Sure, I’m passionate about them – but dammit – most of this shit was a problem before I was born, and it’ll be a problem long after I’m dead. I have been in too many close calls with the grim reaper to really get too excited over the stupidity of human-kind, of which I have no control over.

I think it’s always important to keep a sense of humor about things – although some things really just touch me in a way that makes me want to kick ass – like your experience with cop rape and the NOLA justice system.

I can’t answer the question, obviously. But one time Maggie described her husband as an “alpha male,” which I thought was an interesting word choice.

Now, the most famous Alpha Male is Arnold Schwarzenegger. What I noticed years ago was that Arnold never got in the tabloids for fighting. Why? Arnold knew, down in his bones, that he didn’t have to prove anything. So if somebody walked up to Arnold in a bar and talked trash, Arnold’s reply would be to say, “Dude, whatever,” and turn away.

Similarly, when I read posts by Maggie’s Man, what comes across to me is a quiet “I don’t have to worry” self-confidence.

Alpha Males can’t be manipulated, browbeaten, or bullied; they can only be divorced.

Grim Ghost answered the question very well. I don’t think my husband and I have ever argued on a matter of fact or opinion; if he disagrees with me he simply states his opinion, and done. If the fact concerns a course of action he’s far more likely to simply say, “This is what we’re going to do” than try to convince me of it. That’s not to say he won’t listen if I calmly explain why I think it should be otherwise, but if I start flying up in his face about it he usually shuts me down pretty fast. Of course arguments about emotional stuff are different, but unless he’s under a tremendous amount of stress we don’t usually have many of those, either; the last one I can remember that exceeded a few sentences of “hot words” was in April of last year, and the last one of any kind was last September.

i read the guardian article about the indian sex workers and most readers seemed to not get it;they called ”empowerement” crap and that sex work was just the best out of bad choices for them,that they just thought it was empowering because the alternatives were hard manual labour with little pay or a bad marriage.now given that how so many people in the advanced western world work for big corporations,where they have to kiss the ass of the boss,follow stressful deadlines and be subjected to a standard set of working hours,which they are not allowed to alter and which is not even for granted if the boss decides so,its idiotic that they consider a type of work,where none of this applies and its a given fact that many sex workers find it hard to leave,because the benefits they have are rare in the mainstream workforce,degrading.why are we not allowed to call the people, who do in fact enjoy their jobs in those companies,dillusional but they have the right to call us that way?i do agree that it takes a special kind of person not to to buy in the propaganda about sex work,hell it takes a special kind of person not to buy into any kind of propaganda that theyre fed with.also,
people fail to realise that just because they couldnt do a job,it doesnt mean that this job is abhorrent.it fully depends on someones personality and qualities,if they are able to do a job well and like it.

That’s the average, and you can assume that non-skilled or labor intensive jobs pay a lot less.

So a woman who leaves Romania to work in a German FKK can earn THAT MUCH in less than two good calls, which she could do in less than two hours – and lay around the pool the rest of the day getting an “all over” tan. She can do as many calls or as few calls as she pleases – and she is not required to violate any personal “boundary” (like kissing) that she has. She can say “No” to any potential client.

When she goes home – she carries with her more Euro than she can carry. Since money is power – that seems pretty “empowering” to me. And – all that money came from fairly well-to-do men from richer nations than Romania … and she takes most of that money back to Romania with her. This can be considered a “wealth-transfer” which is perfectly natural and organic. It hurts no one – and it empowers and enriches both the woman and the country she’s hauling those Euros back to.

And I’m just “picking” on Romania here. You can fill in the blank and put “Moldova” or “Turkey” or “Czech Republic” or “Slovakia” … same applies to all those nations.

Which is exactly why racists want to prevent it. “Keep out the dirty foreigners” doesn’t go over as well as it used to, so it has transformed itself into “concern for women’s welfare” like a Zimbabwean whore turning into an ass.

Here’s an example: like many boys of my generation, I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. I didn’t become an astronaut. I don’t have what it takes (though I’d make a splendid space tourist). Now, this doesn’t make astronaut a bad job, and it doesn’t mean that astronauts need to be rescued, or that they are exploited (they do work long hours and their personal lives are intruded into), and it certainly doesn’t mean that they are trafficked!

Heh. An epidemic of human trafficking in astronauts. Sounds like a bad science fiction novel.

i wholeheartedly agree.when i was 6 i wanted to become a vet,because i love animals.yet,i feel sorry for the animals that get sterilized and i dont have what it takes overall,anyway.other girls wanted to be ballerinas.its an extremely hard job.later i wanted to become a singer.although i do have a nice voice making it in the show business is rare and the whole industry is soul killing.i also wanted to join a female soccer team and play professionally.i didnt do that either,although i was a good center back.all theese jobs are extremely hard-harder than being a pso,which i currently am,at least in my view-a vet might find my job to difficult to handle,yet i dont have the right to call their jobs bad and certainly not degrading.

“Given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they’re afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”

-From “Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind

I try to keep this quote in mind whenever I find myself thinking I’m clever. This rule is how politicians have manipulated the public into giving up their freedoms. You want to understand how the War on Drugs or any other sort of prohibition came to be? Understand this rule.

I have to say, I don’t quite agree with Maggie that there’s no trafficking. I think there’s lots. It’s just that most of it is not in the sex industry, which gets most of the attention. And much of it doesn’t go on in the USA, but between third world nations.

Here’s another interesting thing about prisoners in the US: The inmates of a prison are counted when it’s time to see if an area has enough population to qualify as a congressional district, but they can’t vote. So it might be a few hundred people, almost all of them working for the prison, who choose the congressman from that district.

I understand what you mean, but so many things are called “trafficking” it has become a useless term. As used right now, “human trafficking” can mean ANY of the following:

1) Voluntary migrants who cross borders to work illegally, sometimes with the assistance of smugglers;
2) Voluntary migrants who cross borders to work illegally, with the assistance of facilitators whose contracts are openly exploitative by Western standards, yet really no worse than those of some legal American businesses;
3) Voluntary migrants who cross borders to work illegally, with the assistance of facilitators whose contracts are exploitative by Western standards, and whose recruitment methods are dishonest;
4) Voluntary migrants who cross borders to work legally, but then become “illegal” through some kind of change in condition and continue to work illegally, with or without the help of facilitators;
5) Voluntary adult sex workers, either domestic or foreign, with or without management of any kind (clients of escorts are sometimes referred to as “traffickers”;
6) Women who come into a country on valid visas and then do sex work on the side or leave the exploitative and woefully-underpaid (but legal) work they came in to do for the higher wages and vastly better conditions of sex work;
7) Underage sex workers of any kind, with or without management, coercion or even transport.

Yet, all of these things are crammed into the one paradigm, referred to as “slavery”, and claimed to be part of the working of a vast criminal cartel when in actuality most facilitators are small-time operators, friends or family members or even other workers of exactly the same status but greater experience and resourcefulness. This is like calling everything from a tricycle to the space shuttle a “ship”. It’s a totally useless, completely artificial term. And thank you very much, because I’m going to expand this reply into a full column for next week!

Hi Maggie,
apparently men like your husband or those others who take the position that is is perfectly ok for their wife to work if she wants to but there is no necessity to do so are to be called “sexist” and demeaned in public as old fashioned.

And no women will call this bitch who is demeaning this man exactly what she is. A man hater to just demeaned a man who said his wife does not have to work if she does not want to.

WTF has that got to do with THIS woman who is talking? And why do women demean men who take the position that their wife has a freedom of choice to work or not.

Why do you keep saying that “no women” denounce such women, when in fact many do – including many on the internet – and many, many more refuse the label “feminist” precisely because of such behavior by those calling themselves “feminists”?

Furthermore, you do realize that about half my readership is female, right? Given my views, I shouldn’t have any female readers if your contention was a correct one.

Whorish Media

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